How to Create a Custom Sidebar in WordPress-[Step by Step]

Creating a dynamic sidebar can enhance your website design and help you to attract visitors. Using a custom sidebar makes your sidebar more powerful.

In this guide, we’ll cover how to create a custom sidebar in WordPress.

What is WordPress Sidebar?

WordPress sidebar displays extra information that is not part of the main content. Sidebar plays a very important role in website design. It is a great way to improve the navigation of your website. You can add different custom sidebar styles on different pages rather than having the same sidebar on all posts. It aids to make your website more engaging and user-friendly. It allows you to display advertisements and email subscriptions without affecting the main content of the website.

Practical Uses of Sidebar

It is beneficial for your website to use a custom sidebar. Some of the very useful features of sidebar are as follows below:

For placing an email subscription

To display the reading recommendation

For social media feature

For placing advertisement

With that being said, let’s jump into the topic right away.

Create a Custom Sidebar in WordPress

Creating a custom sidebar is actually quite easy. It can be completely customized as per your need.

Go to Appearance>>Widgets. Click on create a new sidebar. Then add the name and description of the sidebar. Then hit the Create Sidebar button.

Now drag an item from the available widget and drop it on the new sidebar. Then configure widgets as you see fit. After you are finished doing that, just click on Done. This is similar to creating a widget in WordPress.

Once you have created a custom sidebar, you need to set a location to display it on your website. You have to set the location of the sidebar otherwise it will not be displayed on your site.

To do so, return to Appearance>>Widget.

Click on the target sidebar and click on the Sidebar location. Then a pop up will appear. Choose any one location where you want to display the sidebar then click on save the changes.

If you want to display the custom sidebar to specific posts or pages, you can do that from the editor screen.

That’s it! You have successfully created a custom WordPress sidebar.

Final Thoughts

Finally, this is how you can create a custom sidebar in WordPress. If you enjoyed this article, feel free to subscribe to our newsletter using the form below. You can also follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

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